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The “Perfect Dummy”.

It does not happen that often but it does happen. Is this going to be the day? Those who played in the Easter Monday 3A Pairs at the Auckland Bridge Club rather hoped that this would be the day. Well, they had a pretty decent hand of their own:

 

This is not the hand to start with 2 though you might argue it is a 2-loser hand. It certainly conforms to the “Rule of 29” and some! Yet, 1 will never ever get passed while it is important to start bidding your suits as early as possible in case of high-level major intervention. It did not get passed. Indeed the news got a little better when partner bid your third best suit. For me, there is only 1 option as my second bid and that is 6. That sums up your hand pretty well..a minimum of 12 cards in the minors with an expectation of making whichever minor partner chooses. On a really good day, partner has both major aces, K and length in one of the minors and grand will be reached. How often? Well, not very in reality!

6 does seem a middle of the road bid. Over then  to your partner and to tell which minor suit is going to be trumps. Is this going to be the day when the perfect dummy is produced?

Let’s phrase another question. When you have equal length in partner’s two suits, which suit do you prefer to be trumps? You may have three cards in each suit, maybe only two. You choose the suit your partner bid first since that may be the longer of the two. It is not often that your partner will have a choice like they had below. Yet, the guideline given above still applies. Prepare to see the perfect dummy? Well, not quite!

 

When West led Q and North put down AK and a spade suit headed by the 9, your hopes rose that this was going to be a good day. Unfortunately, you also noticed that only two suits appeared in dummy! Never mind. Discard the spade loser quickly and ruff a major to hand and all might still be well. Well, not quite!

3 top diamonds brought more bad news. So, A then Q won by East , a heart to the K, spade ruff, 10, and a couple more rounds of clubs with East ruffing with their remaining trump and a major winner for the defence at trick 13. Down 3. Not quite the perfect dummy.

There were 23 tables in play. We could divide the final contracts into 3, where the minors prevailed, those Norths who insisted on a major and those who misguidedly thought no trumps were a good idea.

The minors prevailed 18 times, “prevailing” meaning winning the contract rather than getting a plus score. However, 5 was made twice and 5 once. Surprisingly, only 6 pairs played in diamonds while12 were in clubs. Four minor suit contracts reached the 7 level ( were they looking for that “perfect dummy” or perhaps a major/minor battle with partner which went on too long!) and then the doubles flew. The most undertricks was 5 in 7.

3 pairs played unsuccessfully in a major, with the pair going just one down in 5 doing remarkably well. The no trumpers had no joy, both at the 6 level, once doubled and they shared 9 under-tricks between them.

There was a saving grace for North South. It was just Pairs and if you got a poor result, it was just one board and you could then move back to try scoring an overtrick in 1NT on the next board.

What a sad ending to such a glorious South hand.

Richard Solomon

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